OBXE Awards: 2012 Local Band of the Year

THANK YOU all for voting and participating in the first ever OBX Entertainment Awards! A total of more than 150,000 votes were submitted since June by our readers for over 100 local nominees in eight different categories, and OBX Entertainment congratulates and thanks ALL of this year’s nominees for their talents and support.

Winners will be announced later this fall and should expect to be contacted by OBX Entertainment in the coming weeks to receive their complimentary award plaque. The complete list of 2012 winners will also be featured on our OBXE Awards 2012 Winners page at OBXentertainment.com.

All write-in “Other” votes submitted this summer will be added to the total number of votes submitted for each nominee as of September 30, 2012, when voting was officially closed in all categories to determine the winners.

Regarding the closing of voting early in the “Local Band of the Year” category, it was our decision to not resume voting in this category once possible poll tampering/hacking became evident. As a result, the top two nominees with the leading number of votes in this category at the last time prior to any evidence of wrongdoing will ultimately both be recognized among this year’s winners.

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This article has 18 comments

This entire contest is worthless. The winner is not being decided by who the public actually sees as the best local band. It is being decided by who has the most time to sit at their computers and click on their own bands name a thousand times.

I 100% agree with you! If everyone got one vote, Zack Mexico would take this. Instead it will go to a band no one even knows about. Luckily, there is no question who the better local band is in this case. That’s already been proven ten-fold. “Best of the beach” has always been, and will continue to be, a total joke. And you all will still be amazing.

Seriously, we appreciate any constructive criticism and welcome your comments and suggestions, all of which will be considered in planning next year’s OBX Entertainment Awards; however, no changes will be made this year, as nominations were accepted and voting has been ongoing since June.

Also, we cannot allow further comments that are negative / insulting to any of our nominees, potential voters, or the OBX Entertainment Awards. Please keep the comments positive, or we will no longer approve them, as our goal is for this to be “fun” for everyone involved. We are not attempting to name the absolute best/most talented/most successful entertainers on the Outer Banks, but rather give a nod to our readers’ favorite picks in these first eight categories.

Thank you all for your time and support,
– Matt and Sue Artz, Editors In Chief, OBXentertainment.com

“Weird Reef” is the OBX’s new cruising 12 with the top down anthem. In the long standing tradition of Carolina entertainment creativity, Zack Mexico hits the sweet spot with melodious vocals. “Weird Reef” is another Custom Song from a talented and creative Carolina band. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=logsKcK9eP4

NBC 17 News Reports: As the band was wrapping up their set at the Contemporary Art Museum, Zack Mexico drummer Joey LaFountaine rocks so hard that he falls off his drum throne. https://twitter.com/ZackMexicoFans

Seriously, we appreciate any constructive criticism and welcome your comments and suggestions, all of which will be considered in planning next year’s OBX Entertainment Awards; however, no changes will be made this year, as nominations were accepted and voting has been ongoing since June.

Also, we cannot allow further comments that are negative / insulting to any of our nominees, potential voters, or the OBX Entertainment Awards. Please keep the comments positive, or we will no longer approve them, as our goal is for this to be “fun” for everyone involved. We are not attempting to name the absolute best/most talented/most successful entertainers on the Outer Banks, but rather give a nod to our readers’ favorite picks in these first eight categories.

Thank you all for your time and support,
– Matt and Sue Artz, Editors In Chief, OBXentertainment.com

Hopscotch Highlight ( Zack Mexico ) …the first club show I’ve got to be at on Friday is definitely Zack Mexico. Based out of Kill Devil Hills, it’s always joyous to see a young band from eastern North Carolina make worthwhile music, as the scene out there is a strange land filled with beach music and christian rock, but alas Zack Mexico joins the ranks of the few that break that mold. At times they can sound like a psychedelic surf rock act, yet at others they can sound like an ambient punk band, they’re a versatile and talented quintet in their early 20’s with limitless potential. http://thebottomstring.blogspot.com/2012/08/hopscotch-highlight-on-zack-mexico.html

Speakers In Code Hopscotch Review: Zack Mexico New Hopscotch venue, CAM Raleigh, is an odd but awesome space. Completely white, with nothing on the backing wall behind the stage, musicians probably feel pretty vulnerable, or on display somewhat. I’m not sure if this was on purpose or not, considering it’s an art museum, but it makes for an interesting experience when the band makes the most of it.

Enter Zack Mexico, a young quintet from the Outer Banks of NC, sporting some pretty fresh haircuts and what appeared to be Samoan tribal threads. Laying aside their lounging psychedelic guitars, they cleverly upped the energy, while keeping the warm baritone voice seems to echo throughout most of their recorded music. Music for the beach, or apparently a festival – they were one of the more impressive bands we saw all weekend. – Matt Smith

interceder Frank Zappa ( Zack Mexico ) It would be silly to call Zack Mexico surf music from the moon — there’s no water up there, let alone oceans. But you wouldn’t have ocean tides without the moon’s gravitational pull. So think of this Kill Devil Hills quintet as inhabitants of the dark side of said orb, where they lasso the centripetal forces of the galaxy to ride waves of skronk across the astral plain. If that ain’t surfing, well, I don’t know what is.

Still, you want to talk weird and wonderful, it doesn’t get any better than the aforementioned Zack Mexico, a young quintet dressed in castoff beachwear that looked like it had been shoplifted from an Outer Banks thrift shop. They alternated between withering Captain Beefheart-esque flipouts, ambient drones and rippling jingle-jangle guitar-pop, with turn-on-a-dime transitions. The interplay between the group’s three guitarists (each equipped with a full rack of sound-effects pedals) was amazing, and the set ended with three out of five members writing around the floor as the bandleader flung his guitar in the air, trying to hook it on an overhead rafter as the crowd howled.